St Mirren seal Dayton loan deal

Gary Teale has signed former Kilmarnock winger James Dayton in his first act since being handed the St Mirren manager's job until the end of the season.

The former Scotland international had been in caretaker charge since Tommy Craig left on December 9 and his team have taken seven points from nine games to remain in the relegation play-off place.

A club statement read: We are delighted to confirm that Gary Teale assisted by David Longwell will remain in charge of St Mirren Football Club until the end of the season.

The board and hopefully the supporters will have noticed an improvement in performances during their short tenure.

Gary and David are working extremely hard to bring in additional players to add to the squad before Monday's deadline and hopefully the hard work going on behind the scenes will transfer into more positive results on the pitch for the remainder of the season.''

The confirmation comes amid continuing uncertainty over the future ownership of the club, who have been up for sale since 2009.

An English consortium had been in advanced talks with St Mirren and planned to appoint former Liverpool player David Thompson as manager but the club board pulled out of the deal and held talks with an Argentinian consortium, who moved into a strong position to take over.

The progress of that deal remains unclear but reports in Catalonia say that one of the group, lawyer Ricardo Pini, is on the verge of pulling out of a deal to buy troubled Segunda Liga club Girona.

Teale has been allowed to bring in his second - and probably final - signing of the transfer window by signing 26-year-old Dayton on loan from Oldham until the end of the season.

Dayton, who scored seven goals in a three-year spell at Rugby Park, said: I am very happy to come back up to Scotland and start playing games regularly again.

Gary and I spoke quite a bit and he told me how much he wanted me to come here, and I am just delighted to get it done knowing the league as I do and hopefully make an impact.''

St Mirren continue their fight against relegation against Partick Thistle on Friday night and defender Marc McAusland strongly shares the board's opinion that Teale and Longwell are instigating improvement.

Saints have still not won a league game at home or kept a clean sheet this season, but they have won two of their last three away games and can leapfrog Motherwell into 10th place if they win at Firhill.

McAusland said: We have been playing quite well in the last three or four games and have picked up some points, but not quite as many as we should have.

The boys are working hard under Tealy and Davie and are enjoying it. It's a wee bit different and we are working on a few more things. The boys are definitely reacting to what they are saying and hopefully we can pick up more points.

From defence to the forward line we are breaking a lot quicker on teams and getting the ball up the park more quickly and moving it about a lot quicker than we had done in the past.

We are working on different things in training and I think the boys are enjoying it a lot more. The boys are taking confidence from the way we are playing.''